US Airways’ double elite qualifying miles promotion, announced back in February, was about to expire. With everyone around them running promos at the moment, they’ve decided to extend theirs through April 30.
Personally this reminds me of Mexico City…
(Hat tip to D.R.)
I meant to blog this earlier today, but Lucky beat me to it.
There’s a way around the rule that United tickets purchased prior to the start of their double elite qualifying mile promo don’t count towards the promo, thus saving you the cost and hassle of rebooking trips… you just have to call Mileage Plus and ask to be registered for promotion code MPW999.
Northwest (register here) and Delta (register here) have jumped on the Double Elite Qualifying Miles bandwagon started by American and followed soon thereafter by United and Continental.
Like American and United — and unlike Continental — the offer applies only to tickets both purchased and flown during the promo period. So tickets bought last week, for instance, won’t count.
And unlike the other airline offers, this one exludes the least expensive fares from earning double qualifying miles. Specifically, Delta L, U, and T fares and a shifting set of Northwest fares based on region of travel — read the terms and conditions! — are ineligible.
Meanwhile, they promote the offer as ‘up to triple qualifying miles’ which is somewhat disingenous, since that applies to the highest fares that generally earn a qualifying mile bonus anyway.. they’re just saying that the base and miles miles on such fares are doubled. For a large portion of customers this is a non-promo. But if you fly last minute tickets and/or premium class fares, it’s worth registering…
Back when airlines were fighting against a potential ‘Passengers Bill of Rights’ out of Congress (it seems like eons ago, airlines were seen as too profitable and distanced, much as oil companies were a couple years ago, there’s always a villian-of-the-moment) they introduced their own action plans, giving them the argument that legislation was thus unnecessary.
United’s version of this was their customer commitment, mostly vacuous statements but there were a series of policies which were useful to customers. They did allow (and still allow) reservations made with them to be cancelled within 24 hours of booking for a full refund, and now also offer a ‘hold’ feature on their website.
My hazy memory says that airline pricing was a big issue at the time, United promised to quote the lowest available fare when queried for a price. United also said that if prices went down after purchase, they’d give you a voucher for the difference on asking. That way customers were protected against buying too early at too high a price, and customers could buy with confidence.
That last policy is, more or less, now no more. Lucky points out that United snuck in a change on Friday, imposing a $150 ‘administrative fee’ for processing a fare drop voucher (on domestic tickets, international fees apparently will vary and are not disclosed on United’s FAQ page).
It’s sad to see this great policy go. And somewhat ironic, coming just as the non-airline booking sites like Orbitz and Priceline are offering their own (albeit weak) pricedrop guarantees.
Continental is now offering double elite qualifying miles as well (registration required).
Like the United and American offers, this one applies to travel through June 15. Unlike those offers, the terms and conditions do not require you to actually have purchased the ticket during the promo period. So it would appear that tickets purchased prior to today, but flown March 20 through June 15, will all count towards double elite qualifying miles. No need to cancel and re-book, eating applicable change fees!
So… who’s next?
(Thanks to D.R. for the pointer.)
One Mile at a Time had to fight for his Priority Club points to post from a recent stay at the InterContinental Grand Stanford in Hong Kong.
Priority Club initially refused to credit the points, which didn’t post on their own, even though the booking was made on their own website. They explained,
Unfortunately, the room rate paid during the stay in question was deeply discounted and is ineligible for credit to your account. We have provided the link for Priority Club Rewards’ Terms and Conditions below:
They also explained that eligible in-hotel spend might earn points, and encouraged Lucky to send his bill in ordetr to credit those points.
However, if you have incurred other charges during your stay , you may forward your itemized invoice to us in JPEG or PDF format so we may credit them accordingly to your account. Qualifying charges include food and beverage, phone, laundry, and Pay-per-View movies.
Now, let’s take this second part first. What points, exactly, were they going to post for non-room rate charges during a stay at an Intercontinental property? Intercontinental stays earn a fixed number of points, irrespective of the length of the stay or the rate paid. Food and beverage charges do not earn incremental points.
That’s one clue that Priority Club’s reps do not know what they’re talking about.
But it gets worse. The basis on which they deny points, directing customers to their terms and conditions, is not even supported by those terms and conditions. While Priority Club offers up this ‘no points on deeply discounted stays’ things from time to time, and usually flags “30% off usual rates” as their threshold, this actually is not supported by the program rules.
Not only should one obviously be able to rely on bookings made on the Priority Club website, especially when the website doesn’t flag otherwise (and frequently offers rates that earn bonus points for more money but potentially below the threshold Priority Club would otherwise apply for points earning), but the terms and conditions support the notion that bookings made through the website and Intercontinental’s Central Reservations qualify for points:
Points will be awarded for Qualifying Room Rates booked through IHG central reservation offices, IHG web sites, travel agents or directly at the hotel.
Now, there is a caveat about what rates qualify. But nowhere doess it specify that rates which are ‘too low’ do not, as long as they’re booked through a qualifying booking channel.
Qualifying Room Rates paid for hotel room nights: non-discounted rate, standard corporate rate, worldwide sales negotiated rate, national/regional/local government rate and specified leisure rates as confirmed by IHG’s HOLIDEX® Plus reservation systems.
Corporate rates, negotiated rates, government rates, leisure rates… these qualify for points. And if there are rates that do not then these need to be disclosed (in the terms and conditions explicitly, or at least very clearly when making a booking).
So where does the caveat come in about a specific level of discount forfeiting points? The terms and conditions do include one such exclusion — and the usual exclusion Priority Club cites when denying points is 30% below standard rates — but that exclusion only applies in a very limited circumstance:
In addition, in North, South and Central America and the Caribbean, points may be collected on locally negotiated rates if these rates are discounted less than 30%. At Asia Pacific hotels, Qualifying Room Rates also include all locally negotiated rates.
Only ‘locally negotiated rates’ (in contrast to rates booked on the Priority Club website!) exclude points earning if the rate is 30% below standard. That’s the only reference to a threshold at which specifici discounted rates do not earn points, anywhere in the terms and conditions.
Furthermore, the booking in question was for a hotel in Hong Kong – and the terms and conditions explicitly say that this 30% threshold does not apply to the Asia Pacific region! (Last time I checked, Hong Kong was in Asia.)
It would sure be nice if Priority Club would read its own terms & conditions.
That said, every time I’ve ever seen this happen, when a customer pushes back I’ve always seen Priority Club relent. But it’s annoying nonetheless.
Anyone who has been watching travel costs and deep discount deals recently, in the US for example in New York and Vegas, knows this anecdotally — but US travel spend fell at a 22% annualized rate in 4Q08. Ouch. But great for bargain hunting.
It seems like, as far as deals go (and it’s a great time to Priceline!), it’s 2002 all over again!
No surprise that United and American are offering a double elite qualifying miles promo through mid-June. There will certainly be more bonus promos to come.
Via Frugal Travel Guy, Avis is offering bonus Delta miles at airport locations through December 31, as follows:
It appears that these coupon codes will generate the promised bonus miles, and that they are compatible with whatever standard discount (“AWD”) codes one normally uses, though I can imagine that some discounts you’d find online could in practice void the bonus is those codes normally exclude mileage earning.
That’s important, because the offer does also include a ‘discount code’ that promises 25% off rates, though in my experience these codes don’t usually deliver as promised, and sometimes yield rates that are more expensive that what I normally find using my own standard discount code from my company. So as always, shop rates, and forunately you should still be able to earn the bonus when you do.
Sadly this offer doesn’t include one-day rentals, those are where the real mileage values kick in that can make renting a car for no other reason worthwhile. These just happen to be valuable if you’re renting a car anyway, 2500 Delta miles for a 3-day rental is enough to make me give up my standard Avis crediting to Virgin which provides 1000 miles flat regardless of rental length.
United’s offer naturally requires registration. Register prior to completing travel. The offer applies to tickets booked from the start of the registration period only, so tickets purchased between now and June 15 for travel during that same period will count.
Hertz is offering Free #1 Gold status (their entry-level status which is frequently available fee-waived) and through this particular promotion, using CDP number 1826991, age fees for renters 21 to 24 years old are waived.
Resort fees are one of my pet peeves, they are part of the room rate that hotels don’t disclose in advance.
This is especially annoying on Priceline where resort fees that may apply aren’t included because you don’t know what hotel you’re getting in advance and thus can’t choose to pick a hotel without a fee. Once you’re prepaid you learn about the fee and your booking is nonrefundable, so you’re stuck paying hte resort fee or forfeiting your prepaid reservation. The only solution is to be savvy, know where a resort fee could apply, and choose to avoid Priceline if the resort fee makes a difference.
Some hotels at least try to keep up the pretense that the fee ‘buys you something’ such as parking or free internet or ‘use of the pool’. But of course some hotels throw those things into the room rate anyway. Since when was use of a hotel’s pool not paid for simply by being a registered guest at the hotel?
I think I’ve now seen the most egregiously silly example, though, of a resort fee. This Flyertalk thread reports on a $5.50 a night resort fee at a $36/night Rodeway Inn. Truly the end of the world is nigh?
Starwood is offering up to 50% off prepaid bookings made by March 23 for stays through September 7.
Details will vary by hotel. Some have a maximum four night stay, others especially resorts a maximum seven night stay. Not all hotels participate, and various restrictions apply at those who do, such as only Thursday – Saturday arrivals at some predominantly business hotels.
Moreover, the rate under this offer will not always be the best possible rate — definitely best to price out hotels on their own and then under this offer and compare. Still it will represent a good savings at many properties when eligible.
American is offering double elite qualifying miles through June 15. Registration is required.
The offer only applies to tickets both purchased and flown between March 18 and June 15, and only on American flights — no codeshare or partner flights count. Registration prior to the end of the promo period will cause all qualifying travel during the promo period to generate the double elite qualifying miles.
Update: The link stopped working after I originally posted it. New link, fixed above. Meanwhile the terms and conditions of the offer now require registration prior to travel, rather than prior to the end of the promo period. So that’s a minor change since yesterday.
JetBlue is offering 15% off flights booked by March 24 for travel between May 4 and June 17, 2009 (excluding May 21-25) by using promo code AMEX15 at JetBlue’s promo flight booking website.
Cranky Flier learns the importance of United’s call center geography.
I’ve had countless problematic interactions with some Indian agent conveniently named “Mark” or “Mr Smith” or anything else generically American in the past, and I’ve rarely left the call feeling satisfied. In fact, I consider it a victory if I find an agent that I can actually understand, so when I had to call the reservations line this week, I braced for the worst.
The agent that answered the phone had a slight accent and tone that led me to believe he was Filipino. First victory: I could understand him. I told him my situation, and he surprisingly didn’t have to ask for clarification. He pulled up my reservation, said that the $25 phone reservations fee didn’t apply, and quickly took care of it for me. Then he took my address and said the remaining $32 of the credit would just be sent to me in the mail for future use.
(Emphasis above mine.)
What Cranky has stumbled onto is that there is a difference between international call centers. Usually it’s a matter of training and whether the agents in intenrational call centers have received enough of an investment to learn what they’re supposed to do. With United, it’s really simple in general to know whether you’ll have a generally good or generally bad experience with your outsourced phone call. It’s summed up simply as: India bad, Manila Good.
Now, calls abroad usually take longer. But US agents aren’t a panacea, I frequently get cranky agents out of Chicago (Honolulu has been good to me). If I’m ever trying to push the envelope I like Manila because they’re less likely to document my reservation with something unpleasant than are US agents, if only because they are less confident in themselves. US agents tend to be certain of the rules, even when they’re wrong. Manila agents will frequently have to ‘check their resources’ to ask permission or clarification on things, but will usually try to be helpful. And those hold times can be interminable. But in the end you’ll get what you need more often than not. And sometimes even when you aren’t quite supposed to. Indian call center agents on the other hand are less than unhelpful. Hang up and try again.
Randy Petersen points to the Priority Club Friends and Family discount, which anyone can use. And the discount seems to be pretty good. Reservations are pre-paid and must be made by the end of May, but stays can be for up to a year from date of reservation. Points aren’t supposed to be earned on the rate, but sometimes are. Each hotel determines their own availability and how deeply to discount, some properties take as much as 40% off.
Frugal Travel Guy has pointed to the offer before and there’s a Flyertalk thread on the issue.
But personally I’d use the link Randy points to, because I want to be Steve Sickel’s friend. I’ve corresponded with him in the past, and he’s struck me as a pretty good guy, and I mentally thank him every time Priority Club bonus points post to my account (which is often!).
With the Northwest/Delta merger (Delta acquisition of Northwest), the surviving credit card partner is American Express. The US Bank-issued Visa will be going away later in the year. American Express, with its higher interchange fees, is likley in a position to be offering more for miles, and American Express has played an integral role in the financial viability of Delta over time — prepurchasing as much as a half a billion dollars worth of miles at a time and extending a $100 million line of credit.
Naturally this is a blow to US Bank, as their Northwest partnership is big business for them. Word is that they are going to try to keep customers in a new proprietary points program, offering their own points where 20,000 points buys a domestic ticket on any airline. Most people think in terms of 25,000 domestic coach awards with capacity controls, so these offers have been a powerful selling point for banks in the past several years. US Bank will throw in sweeteners like $20 credit towards travel purchases like luggage, onboard meals, and such.
US Bank is really anxious to push the new product, and they’ll give 500 Northwest miles to current cardholders who sign up to learn more about changes to the card.
Whether there’s any meaningful value at all in the program remains to be seen. In the meantime, though, even as a Northwest partner the only reason to be carrying the US Bank Visa (or for that matter the Delta Amex with the abolition of its ‘everyday double miles’), signup bonuses aside, is for bonus elite qualifying miles based on spending provided that you’re looking to top off towards elite status. Actually, with the specific Delta American Express Reserve Card the other benefit is upgrade priority within elite status and fare class. But certainly these products aren’t attractive for their earnings, since a NW/DL mile is worth less than most other North American mileage program currency units.
One Flyertalk member, in a discussion on the new details-yet-to-be-announced US Bank program, asked whether he should have been putting his spending on an American Express Membership Rewards-earning card instead. The answer, elite qualifying mileage opportunities aside, is an emphatic yes (though there are other cards to consider such as the Starwod Amex or the Hilton HHonors Amex Surpass card — where $40,000 in spend earns top tier elite status — that are better options.
120,000 Amex Membership Rewards points transferred to Air Canada gets you a first class Star Alliance award from North America to Asia, you’re allowed to transit both the Atlantic AND the Pacific on that award, and you’re permitted TWO stopovers (or a stopover and an open jaw). 63,000 Amex points transferred to ANA is enough for a Virgin Upper Class award roiundtrip New York-JFK to London-Heathrow (and of course transferring from Starwood means even fewer points because of the Starwood’s transfer bonuses where 20,000 Starwood points yields 25,000 airline miles with most programs).
The new US Bank card program will be a proprietary points program, which is usually even less valuable than Northwest/Delta miles. If you’re interested in domestic coach tickets for your credit card spend, then such programs are indeed useful. You earn points in their program, they buy you a domestic ticket. But if you’re interested in premium class travel, these cards are usually a poor value — and such rewards are precisely the sweet spot in airline mileage programs. Plus you really don’t have options for mileage earning and combining miles from various sources in a single account the way you do with airline programs (flights, hotels, rental cars, restaurant meals in addition to paying for the meal with your credit card, sometimes test driving a car, etc).
Occasionally these points programs can be valuable, and those situations seem to fall into three possible categories:
In the old days of the Citi Thank You Network rewards program, there was no cap on the price of tickets. Redeem for a flight to Japan in coach, only full fare tickets were available, and they buying you say an $8000 airline ticket instead of a $1000 ticket.
That got too costly to Citi and so they did impose limits on the price of tickets they’d pruchase, with coach travel amounting to two cetns a point in value on their fixed price redemption chart, and three cents a point for premium class travel. But this was still far more lucrative than just the one point = one penny formulation that’s most common in proprietary programs (or one penny as a cap rather than a fixed value).
But that was deemed too expensive, and they limited the fixed point redemptions to only some specific cards and excuding the vast majority of Thank You Network earning accounts. But there were ways around that, since points from various accounts could be combined and you only needed an Expedia account (which was free) to be eligible for fixed point redemption.
But that was deemed too expensive, and so in January they announced an end to the fixed point redemption chart entirely effective March 1. That meant all points would be worth no more than a penny apiece, rather than up to three. And then without any notice in early February they imposed a limit of 2 cents a point in value for premium class redemptions, down from three. Now the fixed point redemption option is no more.
Now, I’d venture a guess than many many people redeeming for North American business class travel (90,000 points for a ticket up to $2700) really had no interest in such a redemption. Instead, whether under the old program where you could get an $8000 ticket to Japan or the more recent version where you could score a $2700 ticket between Elko, Nevada and Montreal, one would be sure to include a nonrefundable segment in the itinerary and then once the ticket was issued, cancel the itinerary. That way instead of Citibank getting their money back, the customer would have an airline credit for the value of the ticket minus any change fee. Delta was an especially popular airline for such redemptions, because their credits — after booking a first ticket in your own name — could be used by anyone. (You’d see a whole lot of ~ $1900 Delta credits being traded on Flyertalk’s Coupon Connection.)
I’ll be watching the new US Bank points program, of course, to see if it includes any of the features of the Citi Thank You Points program that once made it special. The guess of course is that even if it does, it won’t last, but such offers are great to take advantage of while they’re around. If the US Bank program offers significant bonus points, leverages the redemption value per point in some way, or doesn’t cap the price of tickets purchased with their points then it will be worth considering their card.
If on the other hand they just offer a straight $1 = 1 point, 20k points = a domestic ticket worth $X, then move along, not worth your time. If that’s of interest to you just get a decent cashback rewards card since you can do better than 1% and you get real money instead of someone’s else’s currency that’s restricted to use towards travel (or sometimes offering less valuable redemptions towards merchandise at a lesser value than one cent a point).
Lots of discounting out there in Hotel-land, and Vegas in particular. This is hardly the best deal I’ve seen, but the best deal on a Four Seasons in awhile at least. The top places usually seem to let their occupancy rates suffer rather than drop price too substantially (though you may find amentiies thrown in, or discounting via third night free offers).
So it was interesting to see the Four Seasons Las Vegas offering rooms from $149 a night through May 14. A two night minimum stay is required, and weekend nights are included in the offer.
